Toads & Witchcraft Jon Kaneko-James MAY 8, 2015 · 9:34 PM The Shepherd Witches of Normandy In his book Grimoires, A History of Magical Books, Owen Davies writes of how Thomas Tryon, the English mystic, learned to read while working as a Shepherd. In Tryon’s writings, he leaves the passage, ‘[The] Sherpherd and Husbandman understand something of Nature, putting out their own Eyes, and boasting what Wonders they can see with other Mens.’ Likewise, Davies records that John Cannon, while a child, met a shepherd who introduced him to the magical arts contained in a copy of Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. A Brief Note I must admit, I’ve partially only included an introductory paragraph from Davies’ superb work to show that I made every attempt to write from as many sources as possible. I usually try to use four or more sources for these blog posts, but as I researched for this particular entry, I found that every source tracks back to William Monter’s Toads and Eucharists: The Male Witches of Normandy, 1564-1660. If there is another work that has eluded me, I apologise, and I do hope that someone makes me aware of it. Cor Hendriks, Toads & Witchcraft Information File (PDF Aug. ’16) 1 Since I really want to write about the shepherd witches of Normandy, I’ve followed suit with Robin Briggs, Owen Davies and Brian Levack in publishing a précis of Monter’s original work. Male Witches in Normandy While the evidence does hold out that in general (with the exception of Iceland and certain Scandinavian and Eastern European countries), in 1565 over half of the defendants tried at the Parliament of Paris, and three quarters of those tried at the Parliament of Rouen, were men. The Parliament of Rouen was particularly severe in terms of its sentencing: a survey showed that Rouen dispensed a larger number of death sentences for sorcery than any of its neighbours. Witch trials were unusually regular, judging that at least one death sentence for witchcraft was passed every year from 1582 to 1619, and lasted longer than in neighbouring regions. In Iceland cultural traditions biased witchcraft away from women, but as Monter wrote, Normandy lies at the centre of Northwestern Europe. Although Normandy had a centralised court, the Duchy maintained several legal convention of clamour de haro and an annual contest where a criminal could be pardoned, but it is not proven that any witch was ever pardoned at said festival. Yet… Norman witchcraft was overwhelmingly male. In 1540, Monter writes that two young shepherds from Gisors were executed for sacrilege after stealing hosts from the mass for a sorcerer who was never found. In 1542, Laurens de Limoges was sentenced to be hanged for sorcery and his body burned, but successfully appealed and was instead banished. In 1577, two shepherds were tried (again, in Gisors) for being ‘accustomed to bewitching, causing deaths of people and animals for twenty years’. According to Monter, both had been tortured for sorcery after appealing the decision of the Rouen parliament. After 1625, Monter writes, Norman witchcraft was a male monopoly. Cor Hendriks, Toads & Witchcraft Information File (PDF Aug. ’16) 2 The Shepherd Witches In May 1603, a twenty year old shepherd appealed a conviction for witchcraft in Rouen, after already being banished form the district of Moulins because of sorcery. This time he was hanged and burned for ‘execrable blasphemies of the name of God’. Interestingly, although five of his twenty five witnesses were priests, the parliament reduced his sentence to a public apology followed by life in the galleys. A second shepherd that year was fifty years old, and had been previously condemned for sorcery. Another man accused him of making ‘a pact with the enemy of the human race’, and it would seem that he did know some degree of folk magic: despite denying spells to set wolves on a stranger’s flock, he admitted knowing how to protect his own flock by the use of a special prayer. In this case, the man was examined by parliamentary surgeons, and was found to have no feeling in a patch on his left side during his second day of examination. A final examination, for this article, proves that there might have been some fire behind the smoke of witchcraft. In June 1603 two men were arrested at a rowdy wedding in Sainte-Croix-des-Pelletiers. According to trial documents, the shepherd Guillaume Beuse had performed an impotence spell known as ‘the ligature’ during his sister’s marriage, while a pharmacist named Etienne Moreau pretended to undo it with a different ritual. According to authorities, Moreau had been arrested ‘in possession of a bad book containing many recipes and magical signs’, including a piece of paper scrawled with odd symbols, and ‘four pieces of virgin parchment containing invocations of evil spirits’, which led to Beuse’s banishment from Rouen, and Moreau’s sorcerous materials being burned. Cor Hendriks, Toads & Witchcraft Information File (PDF Aug. ’16) 3 Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, by Charles Godfrey Leland, [1891], at sacred-texts.com p. 255 CHAPTER XVI GYPSIES, TOADS, AND TOAD-LORE "I went to the toad that lies under the wall, I charmed him out, and he came at my call." Masque, of Queens," BEN JONSON.) THE toad plays a prominent part in gypsy (as in other) witchcraft, which it may well do, since in most Romany dialects there is the same word for a toad or frog, and the devil. PASPATI declares that the toad suggested Satan, but I incline to think that there is some as yet undiscovered Aryan word, such Cor Hendriks, Toads & Witchcraft Information File (PDF Aug. ’16) 4 as beng, for the devil, and that the German Bengel, a rascal, is a descendant from it.1 However, gypsies and toads are "near allied and that not wide" from one another, and sometimes their children have them for pets, which recalls the statements made in the celebrated witch trials in Sweden, where it was said by those who professed to have been at the Blockula, or Sabbat, that the little witch [p. 256] children were set to play at being shepherds, their flocks being of toads. I have been informed by gypsies that toads do really form unaccountable predilections for persons and places. The following is accurately related as it was told me in Romany fourteen years ago, in Epping Forest, by a girl. "You know, sir, that people who live out of doors all the time, as we do, see and know a great deal about such creatures. One day we went to a farmhouse, and found the wife almost dying because she thought she was bewitched by a woman who came every day in the form of a great toad to her door and looked in. And, sure enough, while she was talking the toad came, and the woman was taken in such a way with fright that I thought she'd have died. But I had a laugh to myself; for I knew that toads have such ways, and can not only be tamed, but will almost tame themselves. So we gypsies talked together in Romany, and then said we could remove the spell if she would get us a pair of shears and a cup of salt. Then we caught the toad, and tied the shears so as to make a cross—you see!— and with it threw the toad into the fire, and poured the salt on it. So the witchcraft was ended, and the lady gave us a good meal and ten shillings." (For a Romany poem on this incident vide "English Gypsy Songs," Trübner and Co., 1875). And there is a terrible tale told by R. H. Stoddard, in a poem, that one day a gentleman accidentally trod on a toad and killed it. Hearing a scream at that instant in the woods at a little distance, followed by an outcry, he went to see what was the matter, and found a gypsy camp where they were lamenting the sudden death of a child. On looking at the corpse he was horrified to observe that it presented every appearance of having been trampled to death, its wounds being the same as those he had inflicted on the toad. This story being told by me to the gypsy girl, she in no wise doubted its truth, being in fact greatly horrified at it; but was amazed at the child chovihani, or witch, being in two places at once. In the Spanish Association of Witches in the year 1610 (vide Lorent, "Histoire de l'Inquisition") the toad played a great part. One who had [p. 257] taken his degrees in this Order testified that, on admission, a mark like a toad was stamped on his eyelid, and that a real toad was given to him which had the power to make its master invisible, to transport him to distant places, and change him to the form of many kinds of animals. There is a German interjection or curse "Kroten-düvel!" or "toad-devil," which is supposed to have originated as follows: When the Emperor Charlemagne came into the country of the East Saxons and asked them whom they worshipped they replied, 1 Dit is onzin. Bengel betekende oorspronkelijk ‘knuppel’, van ‘bangen’ = slaan, kloppen (De Vries 1971, 44f). Cor Hendriks, Toads & Witchcraft Information File (PDF Aug. ’16) 5 "Krodo is our god;" to which the Emperor replied "Krodo is all the same as Kroten- düvel!" 2 "And he made them pay bitterly by the sword and the rope for the crime of calling God, according to their language, by a name different from that which he used; for he put many thousands of them to death, like King Olof of Norway, to show that his faith was one of meekness and mercy." It is bad to have one's looks against one.